Personal blog of Danut Manastireanu

The Fruit of the Holy and Great Council

The Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church was concluded on Sunday June 26th at Kolymbari, Crete. Within eight days of work, all the typical practices in the history of Synods were experienced: doubt and fermentation, surprises and compromise, conflicts, such as the crisis and the impasse in the final days that brought the Council one step away from failure.

In reality, it wasn’t the absence or the positions of the four Churches (among them the Church of Moscow) which endangered the Council. It was the persistence of a radical faction of the Church of Greece which requested that the other churches not be called “Churches”, including the Catholic Church. At some point, it seemed that the Council was fated to either succumb to this demand or to admit the failure of the Council. In this case, the Council would have given a great gift to the Russian…